NEW YORK — When did "watching television" become an outdated term?

Well, it may not be completely obsolete yet. But increasingly it's imprecise, simplistic or just plain wrong. It's a relic of the analog age — like the way people still say "dialing" a phone number.

"Watching television" is a term full of assumptions that, after a half-century, are increasingly suspect. For one thing, just what does "television" mean now? The "watching" part is also open to debate, as my 13-year-old son bears out.

It's no secret that TV is consumed differently today by a younger, more media-immersed, more antsy audience. When my son turns on the TV, he adds another, primary media source, like surfing the Web, to the mix. For him and TV, "watching" isn't the right word. "Stealing glances" is a better description.

Are the TV shows we experience together insufficient to hold his attention (however adequately they hold mine), pushing him to supplement his TV intake with parallel content from his laptop?

Or does the sensory appeal of dual media streams represent its own uniquely satisfying mashup, elevating the experience to some higher dimension?

I'm not stuck in the past. My son has helped me get a clearer picture of what I used to carelessly characterize as TV-watching. I observed him downloading stuff from iTunes. He spends a major portion of his allowance on movies and TV shows, and for a while I couldn't fathom why. Among his acquisitions are TV programs commonly available somewhere in our cable-system universe. He buys programs he could capture on our DVR and play back for free.

Why consider paying $1.99 for a digital download straight to his computer, when he could watch the same thing on TV at no expense?

As he explained, "The Simpsons" and "Robot Chicken" aren't TV shows but strings of 0s and 1s that amuse him. And a couple of bucks per episode buys him the right to enjoy them at any time, wherever he and his laptop might roam. My eyes were opened.

The new paradigm was coming into focus. Then I realized I was already participating.

I had recently taken to watching DVD previews from the networks on my laptop, in my lap, cocooned in my easy chair. And I found this viewing mode as satisfactory as watching the same thing the old-fashioned way, on my HDTV from across the room.

Meanwhile, I was checking out episodes of "quarterlife" (a live-action series produced especially for the Web), and catching up on previously aired TV episodes available for streaming from Web sites like Hulu. No longer was I drawing an increasingly shaky distinction between "watching TV" and these other on-screen spectator sports.

Now I had crossed a huge divide. I had moved beyond my long-standing status as a TV viewer. For decades, TV was known as the One True Source of Video. Now, with PCs and laptops, cell phones, video iPods and other media alternatives, the truth is up for grabs. So why quibble about it? I emerged as a video agnostic.